SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL

Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964). Director: Richard Quine.

Bob Weston (Tony Curtis), who writes for a sleazy expose mag called Stop, has just come out with a story on psychologist Helen Brown (Natalie Wood). Dr. Brown wrote a bestseller entitled "Sex and the Single Girl," but the article claims she is a virgin with limited experience. Weston wants to dig up more dirt on Brown, so he poses as his next door neighbor, hosiery salesman Frank (Henry Fonda), whose wife, Sylvia (Lauren Bacall), is almost pathologically jealous, and pretends to be Helen's patient. When Bob and Helen start falling in love, it causes complications for everyone.

Lauren Bacall

When someone got the bright idea of turning Helen Gurley Brown's bestseller into a movie, they should have tried for something more sophisticated than this dumb "sex comedy" that has hardly any laughs. Even the basic premise of a man getting close to a woman who hates him by pretending to be someone else is nothing new. A sequence when not only Bacall but two other women show up at Brown's office claiming to be Sylvia should at least have been fun, but it's as clunky as everything else in the movie. The picture develops a slight degree of momentum toward the end, but it all winds up in a race to the airport with everyone chasing everybody else in their cars or taxis -- a bit with Bacall and a cab driver is kind of muffed -- and an attempt to emulate the kind of zaniness you used to find in Frank Tashlin movies never really comes off. The whole sequence goes on too long in any case.

Tony Curtis

Sex and the Single Girl might have worked if Carol Burnett had played Brown instead of Natalie Wood. She and Curtis give it the old college try, but they can do little to make any of the lines -- some of which are actually funny -- come alive. Henry Fonda is out of his element and even Bacall is mostly mediocre. Others in the cast include Mel Ferrer as a psychiatrist who is interested in Helen, Fran Jeffries as an amorous friend of Bob's, and Leslie Parrish as Bob's secretary. Two veterans who add a bit to the limited fun are Edward Everett Horton as Bob's boss and Otto Kruger as one of Helen's associates, and Larry Storch shows up as a motorcycle cop driven crazy by all the goings-on. There's an inside joke about Some Like It Hot but the references to Jack Lemmon are repeated once too often. The pic tries to come up with some interesting backdrops -- a dock where Bob threatens suicide, the ape cages in the zoo -- but ultimately the movie is just deadly. Fran Jeffries, who sings and dances in the movie, had previously been married to Dick Haymes, and then married Richard Quine, the film's director, the year after this was released. The marriage only lasted four years.

Verdict: And it's nearly two hours long as well! *1/2. 

TIGHTROPE

Mike Connors

TIGHTROPE (1959). Half-hour television crime drama. One season. 37 episodes.

In this taut and memorable crime series, Mike Connors [Day the World Ended] stars as a man known only as Nick, an undercover police officer who can have few friends and only furtive romances as he goes from city to city establishing phony identities so he can infiltrate the mob in one dangerous assignment after another. As part of his cover, Nick often has to treat innocent people pretty badly, but I imagine he figures the ends justify the means. These episodes were very tightly-plotted and fast-paced and always put Nick into intriguing and suspenseful situations.

Gangsters Daughter with Leslie Parrish

Among the more memorable episodes: "Cracking Point" features Richard Jaeckel [The Dark] as a man blackmailed into robbing a bank, with Simon Oakland as guest-star; "Two Private Eyes" features two sleazy gumshoes who get the business when they look for a missing wife; "Cold Ice" is a mini-suspense masterpiece about the cutting of a perfect stolen diamond; "The Model and the Mobster" has Nick taking on a monstrous hoodlum very well-played by Bruce Gordon; Mike Mazurki scores in " "Long Odds," wherein Nick tries to find out which mob boss ordered a hit on a cop; Margaret Field and Jimmy Lydon guest-star in "Brave Pigeon," in which a hit is put on an innocent man who is able to identify a certain criminal; "The Gangster's Daughter" presents the cultured daughter (Leslie Parrish of The Money Jungle) of a wealthy mobster (Barton MacLane) with an overly ambitious nephew; "Bullets and Ballet" has Nick investigating why a top hood has come to town, with the excellent Doris Singleton (Carolyn Appleby on I Love Lucy) as a guest-star. Arguably the best episode of the series is "Man in the Middle" with Nick coming between a newly-released mob boss (Marc Lawrence) who's in deadly conflict with a younger rival (Gerald Mohr). Mike Connors went on to greater success with his hit P.I. show Mannix, which lasted several seasons.

Verdict: This show rarely dips below a "B+" level in quality and there are a lot of "A" episodes as well. ***. 

PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER

Norman Alden, Peter Breck, and Vic Morrow

PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER (1961). Director: Joseph Pevney.

The ambitious Arnold Flagenheimer rechristens himself "Dutch Schultz" (Vic Morrow) and goes to work for Legs Diamond (Ray Danton) along with his old pal, Bo (Norman Alden). But Dutch isn't content working for Legs and goes off on his own, taking over rackets right and left and incurring the wrath of other mobsters as well as the police. Dutch goes so far as to romance the daughter, Iris (Leslie Parrish), of one of the men he murdered, but he gets competition from Detective Frank Brennan (Peter Breck). Iris dallies with both men, marries one, and pays a heavy price for it. Portrait of a Mobster is superior to other mob movies of the same period if for no other reason than the casting of a terrific Vic Morrow [Curse of the Black Widow], who unlike Danton and David Janssen gets across a sinister and barely restrained menacing quality that makes him seem genuinely ruthless and psychotic. The picture is also well-directed and fast-paced, with an energetic musical score by Max Steiner who downplays the romance for pure and hectic action. There's plenty of gang warfare scenes and even a bit with a bomb in a coffin at the funeral parlor! Ray Danton reprises his role from The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, but only has a couple of scenes. Both Breck [I Want to Live!] and Parrish [Missile to the Moon] give very good performances, and there's also good work from Norman Alden and Frank DeKova. The only person Dutch seems to care about aside from himself is Bo. Dutch has a habit of getting up in the nightclubs he owns and singing but his voice is flat and fairly awful.

Verdict: Snappy gangster flick with an excellent lead performance. ***.

THE MONEY JUNGLE

John Ericson and Leslie Parrish

THE MONEY JUNGLE (1967). Director: Francis D. Lyon.

Four geologists are killed in suspicious "accidents" and it all seems tied in to whether or not a certain field contains oil. The board of directors of the Jumbo Oil Co. hire private investigator Blake Heller (John Ericson) to look into the murders and other matters. As he proceeds with his investigation the murders continue, until an unexpected assailant is revealed. The Money Jungle pulls you along without ever developing into a good movie. On the production level it resembles a failed TV pilot, but apparently that is not the case, and there's not a trace of style or panache to be found. Luke Heller is not your typical private eye with a seedy office, many bills, and hordes of panting women (although there are a couple). Heller lives in a large, expensive house, obviously makes big bucks dealing with corporate espionage and the like, and generally kisses women on the cheek or forehead. Frankly, this might have actually made a good series, it it had been well-handled. Ericson [Honey West] is okay as Heller, and the interesting cast includes Nehemiah Persoff [The Wild Party], Don Rickles, Lola Albright [Peter Gunn] and Leslie Parrish. Persoff and Rickles are fine, while Parrish offers an oddly subdued and relatively ineffective performance. Lola Albright is a lousy singer, but she's quite vivid in her turn as one of Heller's acquaintances. Charles Drake, Kent Smith and Michael Forest have smaller roles and are all good.

Verdict: Done with a bit of flair this might have amounted to something. **.

THE ASTRAL FACTOR / INVISIBLE STRANGLER

THE ASTRAL FACTOR (aka Invisible Strangler/1978). Director: John Florea.

Roger Sands (Frank Ashmore) is a psychotic who murdered his unloving, self-absorbed mother and while in prison has developed the ability to enter the astral plane, become invisible, and escape. Once out, he runs about strangling women who remind him of his mother and/or who testified against him. Lt. Charles Barrett (Robert Foxworth of Prophecy) is the chief detective on the case, assisted by Holt (Mark Slade); both do a fairly miserable job of protecting the victims, but the killer is highly unusual. The Astral Factor isn't a very good movie, its chief interest being its bizarre C-list cast: Stefanie Powers is Barrett's nutty girlfriend; Elke Sommer is one of the potential victims; Sue Lyon is Sands' mother; Leslie Parrish [Missile to the Moon] and Marianna Hill are two other victims; and Cesare Danova and  Percy Rodrigues also have small roles.  Elke Sommer [Deadlier Than the Male] actually gives a pretty good account of herself as a nervous lady all alone in a big mansion waiting for Roger to show while the cops stand by. The film meanders terribly but there is some suspense at the end. The scientific/paranormal aspects of the script are pretty much muddled.

Verdict: The poster is much better than the movie. **.

MISSILE TO THE MOON

MISSILE TO THE MOON (1959). Director: Richard Cunha. 

Missile to the Moon is one of a series of astronauts-encounter-beautiful-women-on-a-sinister-planet films of the fifties, which include Queen of Outer Space, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, and Cat-Women of the Moon (of which Missile is a loose remake). None of these would be considered great movies, but they are fun to watch if taken in the right spirit. For one thing, many critics over the years seem to have ignored the fact that these films – certainly Missile to the Moon – were made for juvenile audiences. Some critics, such as Bill Warren in his entertaining “Keep Watching the Skies!,” rant about the ineptitudes of the film and its dumb science, which seems besides the point when you consider that it is clearly a fantasy “comic book” movie geared for children. Missile is actually entertaining in its own dopey way, far more so than its model Cat-Women of the Moon. We have a collection of gorgeous women trapped in an oxygen-rich cavern inside the moon; a giant spider “dark monster” that eats sacrifices; rock monsters that blend in with cliff walls and then pull away to clunk after their victims; a cat-fight between the heroine and the moon bitch who has her eye on the hero; and the enormous bosom of said bitch Nina Bara, who stabs her leader (or “Lido”) in the back so that she can be ruler of the dying (all the men are gone) little moon community. Years before he made this film Richard Travis co-starred with Bette Davis in The Man Who Came to Dinner; his career went on a downslide that never quit (at least Jim Davis, who had been with Bette in Winter Meeting, eventually wound up on TV's Dallas). In Missile Travis plays a scientist who inadvertently goes along with his girlfriend (Cathy Downs), their colleague who built the rocketship, and two escaped convicts on a trip to the moon. Tommy Cook is fairly vivid as the nasty little Gary, and Gary Clarke is competent as his fellow jailbird, Lon. Laurie Mitchell, who played the Queen of Outer Space, has a small role in this and gets eaten by the unconvincing, wiggly prop spider and Marjorie Hellen, another one of the moon gals, betrays some sensitive acting skills that are generally unappreciated in movies like this. (Later she changed her name and became better known as Leslie Parrish.) Nina Bara chews up the scenery (some might say she acts with her breasts) but she's undeniably vital if not downright operatic. Travis merely proves that he really wasn't much of an actor. Several alleged beauty contest winners were chosen to fill out the cast but they are merely decorative; not one of them gets to say a line. Cathy Downs gets the best dialogue: Looking around at the gorgeous moon women, she says “ If I'd known there was going to be this kind of competition I'd have undressed for the occasion.” {DVD available from Image Entertainment. Includes some interesting publicity and backstage shots in a photo gallery extra.} 

Verdict: Entertaining nonsense. **1/2.